WAVE 2013: Final Days

Deep within the darkness of the bunkers rooms alarm clocks sounded. Doors opened, people shuffled into showers, stripped beds, pulled on clothes, gathered suitcases and lumbered out the door into the daylight with paper bags of breakfast waiting for us in the shade of the trees of the square where our vehicles were parked for the night. Our trusty steeds were champing at the bits after a nocturnal feeding of electric oats fit for a king. When everyone, or at least those who stayed for the very end, were fed and watered we hit the road once again. There were three more "open doors" from which we needed to get our stamps for the final score. The unfortunate thing from the day before was not being able to find one place which eventually was found! So, getting today's stamps were an absolute necessity.

With success in our pockets or rather on the stamp page we headed for the ferry to Meilen and then for Küsnacht and the final festivities of the WAVE. Points, prizes and paraphernalia including ice cream to cool the broiling bodies, not to mention the boiling brains. In fact I need to speak for myself on this particular occasion since I could see them dripping every time I tilted my head. We all sat, talked, drank cool drinks and we were given the final information from Britta Muzyk about the book she would be writing using all of us "WAVERS" as characters in her spy novel. She basically needed to have releases signed from those of us who agreed to be included and so we were given our release forms to be signed pronto which was delayed because literally a moment later everyone, including those who are sun lovers, were called to see who would receive what prize and so all gathered in the shade for it was a scorcher.
The stage was set three long steps above the ground with Louis m.c.ing the proceedings according to precedent as he proceeded to announce the winners. As we all stood, with bated breathe, dripping sweat behind sunglasses as Louis began. The winners in order of appearance were Team Rafael de Mestre in 3rd place, Team Metron Institute and Team Austria’s Green Sportscar shared 2nd place and the 1st prize went to Team Phoenix Contact. Other prizes were given for best blog, most efficient vehicle and more! All in all, all were pleased for the winners, cheering, clapping and the inevitable waving of all the WAVE teams. Then the morphing began as teams began their good-byes with hugs, the shaking of hands, outright laughter, slaps on backs and the turning of the keys in silent cars, their only sounds as wheels turned was the soft crunch of the soil as the area emptied. We began our journey back, first to Salzburg then to Calais where a ferry would trundle us back to the U.K. and finally a flight to Amsterdam.

The next and final blog in this journey will soon appear.

I'm sitting here at home now after taking down an exhibition of images I took from my planted roof, tree'ed and wild balcony and from British Colombia. This particular blog seems to be hard to finish and I sit here with trepidation on just how to wind it down. This writer's suffering electric car withdrawal. Perhaps we need to wake up very early, step into the Peugeot iOn after a small fast breakfast and drive for a few hours in the silence, the passing landscapes and the laughter in a Texan drawl wondering why the sat-nav is begging for more with the earth celebrating the WAVE, GAF and the double edged sword against climate change. It is the awakening of a new dawn and the quickening of a new compassionate conscience rising over the horizon. Let us begin the celebration of a sustainable re-forested world and the enormous possibilities being offered. Let us get to it and change the world, now! May the force be with us!!!!

WAVE 2013 Final Day

Team 20 GMS/GAF Rally Wave Team crosses the finish line!

We won 3rd for most efficient car and first place for best design! Overall we came 7th out of over 40 electric Wave cars. Many thanks to all who delivered on the sponsorship!  
After a night of white noise, wide open windows and the shock of the alarm reminiscent of the alarm in the underwater level of tomb raider we arose out of deep sleep mode. Bug eyed we threw our stuff into the appropriate bags, headed downstairs for the breakfast that would come too late for us to appreciate and headed out the door for the climb back up to the ABB Company grounds where our preferred mode of transportation awaited us. Today would be the day we would break the Guinness Book of World Records, the most electric cars in one place including the parade of all the e-cars in Zurich as part of the Zürich Festival. The accumulation of all of these vehicles which included Segways, electric motorcycles was a sight for sore eyes, especially those of us who are sick and tired of the fossil fuel guzzling stinkorific vehicular terrorists. A few of them became rather upset that we were here, en masse, and they were not invited and so they tried to gate crash this Eco party by bursting through the ranks armed with bad tempers, frustration and fear that their holy god given wheels would soon end up in a heap of scrap ready to be recycled into something  much kinder to our wounded world and climate.

Arriving at our meeting point and destination was quite something. We were parked in rows of two. The man next to us in his small electric vehicle had set up a small table and chair armed with a thermos of hot coffee. It wasn't as if I was ogling that thermos of wake up juice but before I could say anything he offered me a cup of java. I accepted and he produced a small coffee cup, poured it full of that wonderful liquid and handed it to me. Drinking coffee along a shaded side-walk generously sprinkled with electric modes of transportation is truly delightful. You can smell and taste that cup of alternative black gold without the addition of the Texas black gold spewing cars choking you!

A stroll showed some fiercely hot cars, silent by design  with smooth lines, head lights that looked like eyes including tear ducts and begging to be driven with an unsurpassed gentle fury. Sound odd? Try it out, sit behind the wheel, hit the pedal to the metal and your gone, quick as you please leaving others in the dust leaving them with the proverbial question, "Who was that masked man?" It wasn't the Lone Ranger folks or Tonto! It was simply a double edged sword in an electric vehicle whispering down the road of ecological positivity coupled with the planting of trees in the rain forest.

After a stroll between the vehicles we boarded our Peugeot iON in her array of stickerly dress and the count began as we hit the starting gate. A grand total of 388 vehicles were counted and filmed to prove the case to Guinness! 

Our parade caused a traffic jam of google eyed spectators, hands a-waving like an ocean of plants in the gentle breeze. One by one we drove through the final gate ready to hit the tour of open doors which would take us through a variety of small towns, check points for getting the coveted stamp of approval which would increase the score at the end of the WAVE. With three more open doors reserved for the following day we reached the location for the evening meal and the accommodations for the night, Neuhausen Am Rheinfall. Not far from where we arrived was a spectacle to be marveled, the Rheinfall or Rhein waterfalls. Normally there would be 600 cubic liters falling per second, however due to heavy rain it was now double! I could sit here and describe what was witnessed but those words would do no justice to the utter power of the falls.

A few teams decided that  cheap hotels would be the better choice and the rest of us went for the bunkered bed fandango! Having chickened out of the last bunker, I thought, what the hey, let's give this puppy a chance and see what the deal is and why it's supposed to be too cool for school to sleep in a bunker. I can honestly tell you, dear reader, its not what it's cracked up to be but be that as it may we conked out for the night amidst the snores of revolution which were not to be compared with the silence of those lambs, our electric cars.

WAVE 2013 DAY 7

The days are beginning to run into one another and the numerous stops in small towns have become a set of frames in a film with a soundtrack that is not exactly running in a clear synchronicity with anything but itself. Salvador Dali would be proud with his watches dripping into warped time and space stretching and curling into a Möbius strip of backdropped music, people milling around and electric moments of presentations. It has been an exciting day!

I must say the most exciting part of the day was our visit to EMPA. There are many very innovative and fascinating things being done there. An acoustic curtain with numerous holes of varying lengths and sizes which put echoes to shame stopping them dead in their tracks. Can you imagine socks that are so incredibly smooth that friction no longer exists and therefore blisters stay right out of the neighborhood of your tootsies! They are already being used by the Swiss military who I suppose decided it would be a cheaper investment then the constant re supplying of band-aids. A this point this writer put a question forward to do with the socks in connection with the acoustic curtain....I'm going to keep this to myself, mwa ha ha ha simply because our guide through this wonderful tour liked the idea. And then there is a sheet to be used in hospitals to alleviate the problems of decubitus. In fact, the decubitus never even gets a chance with this particular material because it warns the nurse to turn the patient.

There is even something for violinists! Having a fungus among us in our violins is actually a good thing. Why? In the days of the Stradivarius it seems that a particular fungus attacked the  trees used to construct the Strads giving the violins their particularly rich sound. In the contemporary construction of violins one misses this richness of sound. EMPA has found a way to introduce the fungus to the wood and constructed a violin which was then compared to a Strad and the sound was the same!!!! How about that!!!! Fascinating!!!! From fungi and Strads we were shown the breakdown of a mobile phone right down to the nano particles explaining they had as yet no way to save those np's from going to waste simply because they could not be "caught." This writer came up with yet another question/idea and the young lady was then told by our guide she should be writing this down. No, I'm going to keep that under my belt as well;-) Our guide continued telling about bullet proof vests that would actually keep the wearer cool which in itself is pretty cool unless your the cop or maybe the perp who is caught because the cop is cooled! The last thing had to do with orthopedic implants and then we went downstairs, took a test and had something to drink and off we went to the following place. EMPA, you need to think about cross over between labs to find more novel solutions to problems. In other words cooperation between differing labs. Or just call me....
We arrived in Gossau where we would have lunch. The was something for the vegetarians like myself but unfortunately it was disappointing. However, a woman witnessed me kick a bollard in frustration and sheer hunger and walked over asking what the trouble was. Gordon and I explained and she took us on a whirlwind run to a small restaurant that had closed, brought us round the back, walked in and asked if they could throw a couple of salads to take away for us. The owner of the restaurant, after hearing the explanation from Helena, immediately did the deed where upon Helena led us back to the WAVE area and off we drove. Helena, you are our hero of the day and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts!!!!!
Baden was our next and final stop of the day at the APP, the company that develops and builds the Chademo chargers for electric vehicles. The mayor spoke and he has a full plate what with the greening in all its facets of Baden. A brave and determined man and I wish him strength and determination in his endeavor to further green his city. It's been another long day and now we are in the youth hostel by the river listening to its flow of white noise in the night. An early morning will bring us to the Zurich Festival. Tomorrow will also bring that report.

WAVE 2013 DAY 6

After a rather unsettling night of desertification of the core and a lack of sefonsifying sustenance we headed for a number of small places with an abundance of school children ranging in age from 7-15. All were intensely excited about seeing the electric vehicles we were all driving and the nano presentations each team gave informing the kids about their own particular mode of transportation. One town blended into the next with such speed it spun ones mind into a circus of navigational sagacity, the likes of which have never been seen before.


Making a bead for the next town within this run of towns an Audi pulled out of its house with its owner at the wheel right in front of us. The Audi was colored gold and this proved to be the first clue that its driver was a colossal psychopathic barf brain. He drove slowly and we needed to pass him. At the moment we were next to him he hit the accelerator. We saw an oncoming car and darted back behind him. At that very instant the jerk hit the brakes which led to Gordon hitting the brakes which, by the way, work better than any brakes I have ever encountered. We tried to pass again and apparently this moth eaten ding-a-ling liked summer repeats and did the same thing. This happened a total of four times, the last one being when he suddenly decided to hit his brakes 15 meters before the green light. An elderly man on the sidewalk looked at the gold Audi with utter confusion. Thankfully he turned off to some side street and we could continue. We eventually came to a town called Rorschach which is most likely where that particular test was developed. It seemed this was the best place for our gold Audi fortzengorgle to be tested for vehicular homicidal tendencies. It was time to head for the hills and the hills turned out to be a youth hostel...more tomorrow, the day has been long, the terrain beautiful and the kids were a lot of fun.

WAVE 2013 DAY 5

After the epitome of a short night compromised by the blogification of the former two days we awoke blathering about snoring, disappearing socks, a diversity of plugged in technology enjoying a long drink and all four of us giggling and laughing. I say the four of us for we were sharing the room with Andreas and Angela of team Twike our equals in Cleesian nuttery quantified and totally lovable!!! One by one the shower was the choice of occupation and then the mad rush for breakfast, guzzling coffee, searching for the well hidden muesli in plain sight and settling in for the eggs and what have you on a plate of snowy white matching the glacier of the previous day.
The road had to be hit by 07:00 Jack and we were ready to hammer that sucker. Gps'ing the mountain road and we were stopped dead in our tracks by a road block weighted down making clear the gravity of the situation, the road chewed and effectively made rabid we made for the proverbial hills and the aid of a local. Zell Am Ziller  was now in our sights. The goal reached we charged the batteries including our own with lattes under dark green umbrellas baking in the sun. Thankfully there was a reticent breeze but we had to keep moving and get to Innsbruck in the middle of town in a stone square and nary a tree big enough to provide shade. Frankly this shocks me every single solitary time!!! Those stone covered city squares reach a colossal 65*C and there is no one who can tell me they find this delightful. Trees would cool those city squares and, in fact, the cities themselves. The human over heated grump n drop factor would decline dramatically in city dwellers!!!! And then one must take into consideration that on a world wide scale this planet would no longer be suffering an ultimately deadly fever if we would simply replenish our rain forests around the world. In fact, the Growing Air Foundation is busy with this and the more people, corporations, banks etc join in we can cool our planet down.

Landek was our next stop of the day and another small square covered in cement/stone with umbrellas providing the shade.......how wearisome this is....I don't wish to harp but trees would provide not only shade they would also provide a pleasant cooling affect. Our cement, stone, tarred, glass, bricked cities have become death traps and that includes the fossil fuel guzzlers dumping their heat, fine particulates, and let's face it poison into the air. Trees, the replanting of our rain forests and sustainable vehicles are the present and future for a healthy planet!
The battery was finally charged and we could leave Landek for Tsent and we would be taking Louis with us. The back seat was reorganized in record time and looked very respectable although some things threatened to attack anyone attempting to sit next to the tidy pile of suitcases, bags, and other paraphernalia. Louis stepped inside, closed the door, I moved my seat forward to accommodate  his long legs and Gordon began to drive to Tsent. Louis hardly had a moment to breathe
 As we came into the town the band began to play and we all disembarked. Louis headed for the Mayor, Gordon headed for the plug box and I headed for what ever might be headed for completely headless from lack of sleep causing me to be heady. However one must look towards the future and head for the next hill which in this case was the next mountain, namely La Punt. We were given a fabulously informative verbal tour of the beautiful areas we passed as well as information of the protected forest visible from the road in all its majesty. Again upon arrival and on our last juice bar of electricity Louis disembarked, Gordon began the pluggers progress and I wondered how bunkers could be above ground and came to the conclusion that the only way to enter them in order to bunk for the night was.....the bunkers must be hydraulically lifted, a monumental feat of Swiss engineering and then lowered again. We entered the building turned the corner and there in a large room was a long table decked out with the most wonderful buffet in the world pretty much most of it vegetarian! A dream come true and I stood there gobsmacked and slack jawed at this delight for the eyes and stomach. It was absolutely scrumptious and I will add many many thanks to our hostess for this phenomenal meal.

WAVE 2013 DAY 4

After our WAVE photo on the bridge in Weissensee we headed out for Heilingenblut.....yes....that silly angst about vampires since it still means holy blood or could actually mean blood of the saints. Considering the altitude to which we were being elevated and the literally dizzying affect it had one begins to understand the full meaning of those words.



The air becomes thinner the higher you go and so you become dizzy because of the low oxygen level in your blood. Well, since this writer hails from Amsterdam which is below sea level offering one the inevitable idea that the Dutch have truly overly oxygenated blood climbing ever higher to reach this berg has made me, for the first time, oops another first, an extremist. Heilingenblut welcomed us with a speech, ladies in traditional dress, sandwiches off various wild meats and others with cheese and tomato. The vehicles were being charged and a beeline was made to a small supermarket for a few very needed things. Gordon bought a typical Austrian hat which happened to suit him as well as a handful, of various flower seeds from the area. I searched for a baseball cap style hat in white to shield my brain from the baking sun. Within a couple of hours we began the climb to the Großglokner Pass/ Franz Jozef Glacier. This was going to be a climb of immense proportions and Gordon's advice to eat sweets and drink water certainly helped  and even if it hadn't the task of doing both kept me so busy that I might not have noticed the altitude sickness gripping my brain. However the altitude also produced positive eye popping views the likes of which I had never seen. Oh dear, there we go again, another first. I have never been up that high in the open air and it was majestic. And that dear reader is a limp description of what was witnessed. Majestic begins to tickle the edge of the proper description for it was far more.

To stand up there and look upon the glacier and know in your gut that the glacier has grown smaller and the negative affect we, mankind, have had on this blue planet is mind boggling. It is a physical pain that brings one to tears seeing what every member of the WAVE has witnessed today on that glacier is something that every single member of mankind must witness. To ignore it or hide from it and not speak up and act is a crime against life, all life and only condones the crimes against nature. The criminals must be stopped, punished and as far as this writer is concerned forced to see the damage they have done and be made to pay to repair it, to bring forward the cure in the form of the Double Edged Sword Against Climate Change. Our blue planet, our home must have the prescription filled immediately for reforestation of our rain forests and the implementation of sustainable energy in the form of solar and wind now!

WAVE 2013 DAY 3

We were in Aibl and needed to drive to Torborgen in Aibl where we could have a lunch and leave according to a schedule whereby teams left in an alternative order of appearance. Cars were being charged, speeches were being made, people milling about photographing the cars, asking for autographs. Another first for me....was I now what I call a famousy? An odd experience what with a paper WAVE flag stuck in my hair which as time rolled on looked more and more like a birds nest. The flag would surely attract a tenant now. Before that happened, however, we had mounted our trust steed and we were off and driving to the next destination, 60 kilometers down the road  Völkermarkt on the Hauptplatz where we would recharge all the cars and enjoy a stupendous vegetarian lunch of of Käse Nudeln (cheese noodles) that are the local specialty. They look similar to Italian ravioli and the herbs, the sauce the texture the...the.the, they were awesomely delicious and a delight like angels dancing on your tongue. The salad was equally delightful and refreshing.

The time came to leave this amazing establishment/structure which Gaudi would certainly have approved of. The town square where all the vehicles were parked and being loaded was all stone, high temperatures and sun so bright sunglasses needed sunglasses. Finally loaded and not in the traditional way, the vehicles were drunk on electricity and completely compliant in ignitionary locomotion.

This brought us to Feistritz an der Drau with a non-fountaining fountain and completely memorable in the initiation of a memorable case of amnesia. That being said....now where was I? Um.....oh yes.....we left!

Weissensee appeared on the horizon after a drive of 64 kilometers through some beautiful landscapes. We arrived by the skin of our teeth. Having heard this term many times the revelation that teeth could even have skin was truly amazing. There they were bare to the world and our eyes were filled with a most beautiful town. Stupendously green, staggering skies of rarely seen stars and the Milky Way baring down in gentle folds of gossamer in the night sky. The lake shimmered sneaking up on the ducks taking a lazy midnight stroll on the water as someone stood fishing on a small wharf. It was there that in a large hall an astounding presentation was given by Raphael Domjan  about Planet Solar and his story of how this magnificent ship was built and sailed around the world.

 

Afterwards there were prizes awarded and we, Team 20, won the prize for best design. Our day was further made by the night sky as described above. The following morning we all gathered on the bridge for a WAVE photo and then we were off to Heilingenblut which means holy blood leaving one with a vague angst about vampires which we would discover to be totally unfounded. Read the next blog to find out why!

 

 

 

 

Our new WAVE Sky CAM, can't wait to see the videos!!